Tag Archives: depression

An article on Science Daily discusses a recent presentation given at the APA annual conference on the good and bad effects of social networking. Now, I wasn’t at the conference so I can’t comment as to the actual presentation or the researchers giving it, but the article lays out a few of the “arguments” for why social networking could be good and bad for young people based on previous research on the topic.

In it’s bullet pointed list of “adverse effects” of social network use, the first effect is in reference to a study on Facebook and narcissistic tendencies. I actually wrote on this research when it first came out in a previous SPE post. This research showed that the more people checked their Facebook, the higher they scored on measures of narcissism and that certain types of content were also associated with this personality trait. However, this was correlational research. In other words, checking Facebook does not necessarily make young people become more narcissistic. In fact it’s most likely that the personality trait precedes behaviour, as narcissism is a relatively stable personality trait.

There was no citation to the actual research for the second and third “adverse effect” mentioned (that daily use of Facebook increases anxiety and leads to lower grades). But I suspect that again these studies did not experimentally induce use of Facebook among a random sample of teens but simply measured Facebook use and these other negative behaviours and found a positive correlation. In other words, people who are narcissistic, anxious, or depressed, might be more likely to spend their time on social networking sites (for all sorts of reasons). Furthermore, people who spend too much time doing anything outside of studying are likely to have worse grades than people who are spending a quality amount of time studying. Again, I don’t know which research the author was referring to, so if people know of experimental work in this area, please point me in the right direction.

It has been known for ages that internet addiction is related to things like depression. But this doesn’t mean that use of the internet causes depression or anti-social behaviour or narcisism. It may simply be that these types of people are more likely to be drawn to spending vast amounts of time on the internet and that social networking sites in particular might provide a unique outlet for highly narcissistic individuals. To argue that the use of Facebook alone will cause your child to become more narcissistic or depressed seems unfounded and a bit silly.

The article also discusses some positive aspects of social network use, including increased empathy towards friends and as a potential tool for engaging students.Some research has suggested a link between Facebook use and greater personal contentment, greater social trust, and increased social capital among college students.

Clearly there is a need for more research on the topic and in particularly experimental research that can begin to identify if social networking actually causes any of these (positive or negative) behaviours. However, my own suspicion is that different types of people choose to use social networking in different ways. The narcissist will find a use for Facebook that is very different than a young person interested in activism. Both might spend a great deal of time on Facebook but the quality and type of production resulting from that time might be vastly different.

I hope more researchers start looking at social networking sites (and not just Facebook!) in order to see how these are being used by young people and indeed how it shapes or alters behaviour or personality. However, until that research is done we cannot take correlational findings and assume causation.

Tim Lott’s recent article ‘Men are suffering a depression epidemic…’ in the Daily Mail argues that one of the causes of men’s depression is the fluidity of the roles they are ‘expected to play in modern life, both professionally and emotionally, and as fathers and husbands’, which ‘can lead to a lot of painful doubt about what the role of a man actually is’. That is, men are ‘expected to be strong yet sensitive, successful but not materialistic, caring yet masculine’. Whether it is fair, as he does, to blame women for this is a moot point. However, the article does provide an interesting example of how ideological dilemmas may affect mental health.

Billig et al (1988) first introduced the concept of ideological dilemmas in a book with the same name. Their aim was to make a contribution to the debate surrounding the nature of ideology by questioning the notion that ideologies are always constituted by integrated and coherent sets of ideas. Although they did not deny that ideologies could conform to this classical Marxist definition, they argued that a different kind of ideology existed. These ‘lived’ ideologies are the beliefs, values and practices of a given society. In other words, these ideologies are a society’s ‘common sense’ ways of doing things. Unlike their Marxist counter-parts, these ideologies are often characterized by inconsistency, fragmentation and contradiction, which do not provide clear and concise ways for people to think and act. Billig et al (1988) provide numerous examples, such as the dilemma between ‘many hands make light work’ and ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, or, ‘look before we leap’ and ‘he who hesitates is lost’.

Edley (2001) argues that the concept of ideological dilemmas can also inform our understanding of gender and gender relations. One such example is the dilemma of work versus family. That is, how do mothers and fathers fulfill their career aspirations as well as their parental obligations, and also find time to develop their own relationship by having quality time together away from the demands of children and work? In addition, men are today, confronted as never before with mediated messages that invite them to openly confront their emotions, be sensitive, caring and feel comfortable seeking help, whilst at the same time they are expected to be appear powerful, strong and self-reliant (Gough, 2009). It is these ideological dilemmas that Lott and MIND identify as often leading to men suffering depression.

Men are suffering a depression epidemic too… and some of it is caused by women

MIND – Men’s mental health

Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking

Gender fatigue: The ideological dilemma of gender neutrality and discrimination in organisations

A recent poll by the New York Times and CBS has highlighted the link between being jobless and a number of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Unemployment is undoubtedly linked to one’s self-esteem and personal happiness during the period of joblessness but how does unemployment affect people after they return to a job?

Most research on how people perceive their own well-being (subjective well-being) has suggested that people have a relatively stable baseline level of happiness, which, although it can be temporarily altered by a traumatic event, is unchanged in the long-run. However, according to work by Lucas and colleagues (2004), our set points of well-being can actually be changed permanently, at least in the case of unemployment. After conducting a 15-year longitudinal study, the authors found that periods of unemployment lowered people’s baseline levels of life satisfaction long after they returned to a job, even when controlling for income. In fact, the larger the drop in life satisfaction during unemployment, the more likely that one’s set points of happiness remain drastically lower than they were pre-unemployment, even many years later. Furthermore, the researchers suggest that those whose life satisfaction suffer greatest during unemployment are also more likely to face unemployment later in life.

So, not only does having lost your job hurt right now, being unemployed can alter your long-term life satisfaction; and a drastic drop in your long-term subjective well-being can lead to further incidents of unemployment.

Rihanna, a pop star, decided to break up with singer Chris Brown after being beaten by him, and said that she felt embarrassed that she fell in love with the type of man he was.

Approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by intimate partners in the United States annually, experiencing an average of 3.4 separate assaults per year (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998). Physical intimate-partner violence victimization could not only lead to physical harmful consequences such as injury, chronic pain disorders, but also negative mental consequences such as post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), depression, substance abuse and suicide. However, many abused women still choose to remain with their abusive partners and approximately 40% to 60% of women who have successfully left the abusive relationship return to live with their partners. The decision to terminate abusive relationships appears to be a complex and difficult one. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, researchers have identified a variety of practical and personal considerations that influence women’s decision to leave or stay in an abusive relationship. These include economic factors, fear, commitment, belief that the abusive partner will change, and societal attitudes and expectations about intimate relationships. More recently, Byrne and Arias’ study (2006) found that women would hold stronger intentions to end their relationships if they held positive attitudes toward ending the relationship and believe that they will have control over ending the relationship. It seems that women choose to stay in abusive relationships not because Love is blind, but because it’s hard to leave.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the philosopher Foucault’s influential book ‘Madness and Civilization’. In discussing the development of the concept of ‘madness’ as a consequence of the scientific rationality of the Enlightenment, it suggests that ‘mental disorders’ should be viewed as a social construction rather than the medical condition they are typically seen as within contemporary Western society.

Indeed, this is the view proposed by the controversial psychiatrist Szasz, who argues that mental illness is a myth, and that such diagnosis and forcible treatment is predominantly a means of social control. Indeed, compulsory psychiatric hospitalisation has historically been used in this way to oppress dissidents by various regimes across the world.

Although it may seem counter-intuitive in the age of Prozac, ‘mental disorders’ are much less well defined ‘medical conditions’ than they may first appear. The ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association typically lists large number of symptoms for any given condition, and it is only necessary to present a small number of these in order to be diagnosed. Indeed, the difficulty in making such a diagnosis is illustrated by the classic psychological study of those being sane in insane places.

Furthermore, it can be seen that what constitutes a ‘mental disorder’ can vary both over time and culture. Perhaps obviously, drapetomania, the ‘disorder’ that caused black slaves to want to flee captivity, together with the woman specific ‘disorder’ of ‘female hysteria’, are not longer considered to be the problems they once were. Somewhat more surprisingly, however, is the fact that homosexuality was similarly regarded as a ‘mental disorder’ until as recently as the 1970s.

Conversely, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD) was only defined following the Vietnam war, and the new condition of ‘internet addiction’ is a potential candidate for the forthcoming 5th edition of the DSM. The consequences of redefining ‘normality’ in this manner can have a dramatic effect as to how people are categorised. For example, the historical figure Joan of Arc, in claiming to hear voices from God, would nowadays be regarded as suffering from schizophrenia, rather than being considered a divine messenger.

Furthermore, a culture-bound syndrome such as ‘koro’, or ‘genital retraction syndrome’ (GRS), which occurs in parts of Africa and south-east Asia and involves the belief that one’s external genitals are disappearing, may appear strange and somewhat unlikely to those used to Western ‘disorders’.

A more familiar condition such as depression, however, can only be regarded as a ‘disorder’ if happiness and contentment are thought to be ‘normal’. This is only a relatively recent expectation, with Freud himself concluding “that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of Creation”.

From a cynical standpoint, it can be seen that pharmaceutical companies clearly have a lot to gain from promoting particular constructions of ‘normality’, as illustrated by the development of ‘puppy Prozac’ to treat the previously unidentified condition of ‘separation anxiety’ occurring in pet dogs.